Guess who's back, back again? The Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run is back! Tell a friend!

This year the Community Endurance Run is going to kick off on April the 12th and run through Sunday April 14th.

Several awesome members of the Giantbomb community are going to be streaming a wide variety of video games and video game-like things on Explosiveruns.com in order to raise money for charity!

The charity we are supporting this year is Pencils of Promise, a non-profit which works with communities in developing countries around the world to build schools and change lives. One hundred percent of the funds donated online to Pencils of Promise go into building schools, training teachers, sending kids to school, and improving sanitation.

Last year we exceeded our goal of sending 100 kids to school for a year. This year we're going for a big milestone: $10,000. A Pencils of Promise classroom costs approximately $10,000 and I think we are in position to raise that this year. For the price of ten copies of Garou: Mark of the Wolves we can build a classroom for kids who need one!

We are going to have a number of different events, prizes, and donation incentives running all weekend so be sure to mark the GBCER on your calendar and get ready for the fun and the funding. This year we're also happy to announce that we have a single team page AND individual donation pages! That means that if you want to donate for a specific person's donation incentives, prizes, or you just want to shout out one person in particular, you easily can!

If you would like to participate in the Community Endurance Run, PM me and I’ll get you in on the action. Get #GBCERIX trending! Get hype!

There will be ongoing updates every week leading up to the event so keep checking in!

Schedule (All times are in EDT):

Friday:

7:30PM - 8:30PM (April 14th):

@personz will be playing fighting games, Gauntlet 64, and Final Fantasy IX over the course of the weekend. Hopefully he'll see that FFIX is the best FF game!

7:30PM - 11:30PM:

@nickieroonie will be playing Donkey Kong Country! I hear this takes place in the Donkey Conga universe. Also it apparently contains a rap of some kind? With factoids like that, it must be good!

Directly After Unprofessional Fridays:

@thatpinguino's GBCER Kickoff Show will be back again with a bunch of gimmicks. First off will be a return of the Blindfolded Barista Brouhaha: a contest wherein players face off in competitive games, sight unseen, in order to determine who is the best at video games. We will be blindfolded during the setup of the games and during the menu navigation; however, we will be able to look when we are actually playing. For what better way is there to determine who is the best at video games than to compete in weird games you've never played before? This year the winner will be rewarded by getting to prepare "delicious" drinks for the losers that they must drink while blindfolded. The mixers will be weird and the reactions will be genuine!

10PM - 2AM:

@riostarwind has returned from his streaming live slumber to bring 3 SNES games that shall be competed. First off The Firemen shall show his skill at putting out virtual fires. Then BS Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman will remind everyone of that random SNES game that you might have decided to import. Finally it ends with a delightful play through of Kirby's Super Star.

9PM - 3AM:

@zombiepie will be playing Star Wars: Empire at War - Thrawn's Revenge! Apparently this is a Star Wars expanded universe RTS? He tried to explain it to me but all I can remember was him talking about some sort of Star Destroyer with a Death Star attached to it. The Star Wars universe is weird.

Saturday:

1AM - 11AM:

@jeffrud will be starting off his run of (Un)limited Saga! I hear it's a meandering Square Enix RPG. Sounds perfect for this show!

10AM - 10AM:

@danielkempster will be attempting a Zero EXP run of Kingdom Hearts! I have no idea how a zero exp run of Kingdom Hearts would even work, but I'm excited to find out! Time to reconnect with Sora and his boys.

9AM - 12PM:

@rothgar will be completing a Furi boss rush run. Come for the fast-twitch action, stay for the inevitable frustration!

10AM - 2PM:

@riostarwind will be streaming some cool Saturn games. First up he'll be playing the classic Die Hard Arcade. Then The Three Dirty Dwarves show off how rude they can be. Finally he shall unleash the anime with Mobile Suit Gundam.

12PM - 3PM:

@thatpinguino will be making a world record speedrun attempt at Magic Pengel: The Quest For Color. Come for the hand-drawn abominations, stay for the surprisingly gripping story.

12PM - 5PM:

@nickieroonie will be playing Donkey Kong Country 2! Why won't people just leave Donkey Kong alone? He's a good ape with cool friends and villains just keep stealing his bananas.

12:30PM - 12:30AM?:

@zombiepie will be playing 12 hours of FFXIII and if he meets his fundraising goal in time, he will add a thirteenth hour! The last GBCER I joined him on this journey. This year it will be up to you, good community members, to keep him sane and safe. He will also be eating a series of vegetarian foods every hour on the hour because apparently eating well hurts him.

4:00PM - 7PM:

@zandravandra will be completing a Link to the Past co-op randomizer run! If you liked her run with Dan on the site, you'll love this!

4:00PM - 8PM:

@rothgar will be completing a speed run of Shadow of the Colossus on the PS4! 2 years ago he completed a tower climb, this year he'll just be beating the game straight up.

7PM - 11PM:

@nickieroonie will be beating Hollow Knight with his feet! Let me say that again: he's beating Hollow Knight... WITH IS DAMN FEET! So does that make it Hollow Foot or Foot Knight? You decide!

7PM - 5AM:

8:30PM - 10:30PM:

@rothgar is going to finally finish last year's Dark Souls soul level 1 run! He backed himself into a corner last year with a series of donation incentives that he couldn't overcome, but with a year of planning he thinks that he can finally FINISH HIS PLATE!

Sunday:

5AM - 2PM:

@rorie will be playing MMOs with the community and his friends! He'll be catching up on boss fights in WoW and taking another crack at FFXIV.

8AM - 12PM:

@riostarwind has 3 more games to finish! First up he will continue the fire escapades with The Firemen 2 Pete & Danny. Then into a cute world Of Klonoa Door To Phantomville. He'll be finishing up with Castlevania Symphony Of The Night!

10AM - 10PM:

@thatpinguino will be playing Life is Strange, but with a twist: every person on the couch with him will be role-playing the different emotions swirling around in Max's head to help make decisions! Let's see whether anger or arousal wins the day!

12PM - 5PM:

@nickieroonie will be playing Donkey Kong Country 3! Please villains, just leave Donkey Kong and his brainy son alone. He doesn't need a fourth adventure. Just let him rest.

2PM - 8PM:

@zombiepie will be playing the Hatoful Boyfriend Bad Boy's Love ending! I'm told this ending is the realest thing in that game and you simply must see it.

5PM - 9PM:

Friend of the show Ryan will be playing Sea of Thieves with a crew of scurvy sailors! May their pirate-y adventures go swimmingly.

9PM - 12AM:

@patbaer will be singing us out with a Twitch Sings stream! Join one of the masterminds behind League of Heels for a few songs!

9PM - 3:30AM:

Prizes (Please leave a comment with your donation stating which prize you would like your donation to go towards and your GB username so we can contact you if you win):

League of Heels Autographed Copy of Smack Talk Showdown!

@patbaer will be giving away an autographed copy of Smack Talk Showdown, which you may remember from the inaugural "Everyone Can Wrestle" match at Paxadelphia this year. The game is signed by Pat, the developers of the game, and several other League of Heels Superstars!

Rare GB Merch

Thanks to @rorie we have a few GB gift baskets and discontinued merch to give away! Now is your chance to get your hands on some cool and hard to find merch! The prizes are: Two autographed Nighthawk Posters and five grab bags that include a variety of comics and gaming merch that GB has accrued ver the years! The minimum donation for each piece of merch is as follows: $10 for posters and $20 for a grab-bag. Just include which raffle you want to enter in your donation comment and include a way to contact you if you win (GB user name always works!).

Donation Incentives:

Name Magic Pengel Characters and Doodles

@thatpinguino will be putting the name of his main character and his three hand-drawn monstrosities up to the highest bidder.

Wheel of Misfortune -ThatPinguino's streams

All of the streams on @thatpinguino's channel (@thatpinguino's events and @rothgar's events) will feature a wheel of misfortune that we will spin for every $15 we raise during the event. The punishments will range from physical exercises to accents and everything in between! The wheel will update over the weekend as we go!

Assuming Direct Control -ThatPinguino's Life is Strange stream

During the Life is Strange stream you can donate to have one of our emotional role-players assume direct control over Max for 5 minutes at a time for a $10 donation!

FFXIII-2 Extra Hour and Vegetarian Challenges!

@zombiepie will play an extra hour of FFXIII-2 if he meets his fundraising goal before the end of his stream! He will also eat a veggie every hour on the hour for every 8% of his goal that he hits! The list of foods includes: a whole radish, avocado toast (he's apparently never successfully pitted an avocado without hurting himself), fennel, and pistachios.

Pick Zandra's second sprite in A Link to the Past!

Here's where you come in: decide which character will be in the Player 2 screen! (Player 1 will be the Mouse, because that's Zandra!) Simply look at the list below and mention in your donation comment which one you want. Zandra will be tallying the numbers before she starts and going with the most popular! Here are your options!Let's save Double Hyrule... for the kids!

@jaalmo: the idea of a copyright is pretty off base because people who appropriate the work of another culture almost never have to give back the money they make off of their appropriation. For example, Elvis made his money by singing blues songs that were largely written by African Americans who were largely shunned by white audiences. He was talented, but what differentiated him was his ability to sell black music to a white audience. Of course he there was no culture police force that took his money or fame when rock historians figured out the full context of his work. It's just a sad story about how the people who created the music that Elvis sang didn't fully benefit from their work.

There's no enforcement on behaving rudely or selfishly outside of being called a jerk. So I really can't get upset about people trying to be more thoughtful about where the things they like originate. And I fully support the benefits of creating something cool going to the person or people who actually created it.

Cultural appropriation etiquette isn't that hard. Don't recreate the music or art of another culture and claim to have invented it or profit off of it (the Elvis problem). And don't treat another culture as a costume or a fun gimmick. Just treat other people and their cultures with respect and you'll be fine.

@ltcolumbo: I don't get paid overtime, so my company doesn't ask me to do it. I've done it maybe a handful of times over a couple of years. I'm doing fine.

My understanding in most gaming crunch situations is that the overtime is both not optional and not fairly compensated. Though obviously even compensated overtime has its limits. Compensated overtime for 6 months straight is still a problem, though not a financial one.

Edit: also worth mentioning that the specifics of overtime pay are also important. If you make twice your normal rate during overtime, it's a much different story than if you make half rate.

@ltcolumbo: Per my contract, I don't get paid an extra cent for overtime. The same is true in most of the programming jobs I know of. Fairly compensated overtime is a completely different question than the one we are having. Crunch practices at gaming companies, at least in the US, often do not come with any additional pay other than the implied carrot of residuals down the line, if that. If paid overtime were the norm, I'd be fine with that. Then companies would have to make a real cost-benefit choice about forcing their employees to work extra hours. They likely would avoid crunch entirely because it would not make sense, cost-wise. But right now it's just pure exploitation. The contracts are for 40 hour a week jobs with the knowledge that they can strong arm you into performing more work because the jobs are so sparse and the training is so specialized.

Even in a paid overtime situation I'd like some kind of regulation on the maximum amount of overtime you can work in a given year, just to make sure it is actually planned. It's not like a municipal job where the work must get done or society suffers. If your game takes an extra few months, the only person losing out is your financiers or marketers.

@reap3r160: So you never heard of the EA spouse letter, Tell Tale closing last month in the dead of night while their employees were still working with no heads up, mass layoffs that follow almost every major AAA release? None of those things are real issues?

And on your personal example, if you think you're going to keep running on 5-6 hours of sleep for the rest of your working life, good luck with that.

@ballisticbooger: Except you are literally arguing for the way the world currently is. Crunch is already ubiquitous. You're on the winning side of the argument. And you're arguing there's nothing wrong with that to people who are clearly pointing out actionable issues. Someone has to speak for the powerful and against work standards I guess?

@ballisticbooger: Oh I understand the point you're making. It's just a terrible point. And you know that. That's why you made this thread and named it what you did. That's why you're here arguing the way you are. It's a very peculiar position that says "actually the status quo is great and agreeing with management makes me a brave truth teller", but that's your position. And fine, to each there own. But you're going to get a bunch of pushback because it's a bad opinion. Which again, you know because you made this thread.

"Look, just because some people can't tolerate high exposures to lead like some superior beings can doesn't mean we should force people to give up on cheap, elegant lead piping! No one should tell you how to funnel water into your home! What are we going to do, force people to pay slightly more for a virile, quality spigot? That sure sounds like oppression."

(Needless to say, I'm done playing the game with a hot take artist. I just can't handle the searing blaze that is "The status quo is so good that all moves to improve it are actually oppression")